As 2020 ends it is a good moment to reflect on the learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst I understand a bit of optimism wrt. the vaccines can help boost morale, it would be a vile act to make the millions of casualties useless by not conducting an honest and truthful exercise to find out what went wrong. From this, we must change the way we manage global catastrophic risks, it's going to happen again. And it will be worse. I know, this is a blog about emergency management in the … [Read more...] about COVID-19: when you’re not ready for an emergency
Evacuation drills and COVID-19
So here we are, seven months of 2020 are gone and this whole COVID-19 pandemic isn't getting better. What to do with evacuation drills? Do we postpone them to limit personnel exposure? Do we actually need to still do them? Do we carry on desktop exercises instead of emergency drills? Every situation is different and you may need to come up with you best option. Whilst some work places are in lock down and therefore the need to evacuate the workplace is non-existent, other businesses have … [Read more...] about Evacuation drills and COVID-19
Evacuation – What to consider
Hi there! We wanted to put together a brief summary of recommendations so you're ready to evacuate your workplace (school, offices, industrial site etc.) The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OHSA) guideline ‘How to Plan for Workplace Emergencies and Evacuations’ is a nice little guide that gives a useful overview on emergency planning. The section devoted to evacuations point out the following main points: Identify what potential emergencies would require an … [Read more...] about Evacuation – What to consider
Evacuation procedures: What to consider
Hello! In this post we are going to present some information that needs to be considered when putting together an evacuation procedure. We hope you like it! Australian Standard 'AS 3745 – Planning for Emergencies in Facilities' defines evacuation as the orderly movement of people from a place of danger. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, evacuate means to move people from a dangerous place to somewhere safe. We prefer the second definition because it includes the … [Read more...] about Evacuation procedures: What to consider